Easy Karnataka Chana

This simple dal, called bele potole, can be served as a soup, or else as a dal to accompany rice or flatbreads. You can use large North American–style pale chickpeas (garbanzos, known in the Subcontinent as kabuli chana) or the smaller brown split chickpeas sold in South Asian groceries.

If you grind the soaked chickpeas to a coarse paste in a food processor, they will cook much more quickly than whole chickpeas do. In contrast to most dal recipes, here the dal is temp